2008 Outback WA & NT - Day 7 Saturday August 02nd

We woke at around 7:00 am without setting an alarm, as we were only planning an easy day’s drive. Last night was the coldest so far, but I still don’t think it got down to 0 degrees.

It spat rain for about 5 minutes as we were packing up, but nothing too much to worry about. We finished packing up camp and headed off to Giles just before 9:00 am. The Great Central Road for the most part is a nice fast graded road so we were averaging between 80 and 90 kms / hour.



We arrived at Giles at about 11:30 am after a nice easy run. We had a look around the weather station and at Len Beadell’s grader. We went into the roadhouse at Warakurna and once again ran into the Swiss couple. We bought yet another box of tissues for Tracy and I as well now as we were both suffering from the flu. Treated everyone to an ice-cream, bought another loaf of bread and headed off again.



As our planned itinerary was now out by a day we were not going to reach our planned destination of Curtin Springs. The time moved forward by 1 ½ hours as we went through Giles, so we planned to drive for a bit longer and find a bush camp for the night.



During the next couple of hours driving we stopped quite a few times for video footage. We got some great shots of wild camels, including 2 babies, as well as some hawks and some great scenery shots as we passed the Rawlinson Range.

All was going great, road was getting a little rougher with more stones, corrugations and some sandy patches. I heard a sharp crack and looked in the rear vision mirror to see my rear left back window shattered. Oh well I guess it had to happen eventually towing a trailer. We stopped to access the damage and out came the trusty gaffa tape. I now have one lack taped up back window. A call to the insurance company once we reach Alice should fix the problem.



We were about 8 kms from Docker River community as we passed a sign for the Docker River campground, coming up in 5 kms. We were going to keep on going as we were a bit wary of staying so close to a community, but as we drove by, we noticed the Swiss couple already there, so we decided to turn around and have a look with the possibility of camping there for the night. We did decide to camp and as it turned out so did two more vehicles.

One Italian couple with a boy of about 6 managed to get themselves bogged in the soft sand while trying to find a suitable camp site. Driving a hired Britz troopy, they obviously didn’t have too much experience as the more he tried to get out, the deeper he got bogged. After watching this for about 5 minutes, seeing as they were right in front of out camp, I went over to see if I could offer some assistance.

The first thing that I did was to check his tyre pressures. I was shocked to discover them at 60 psi all around. No wonder he couldn’t get out of the sand. I dropped his pressures to 28 psi, gave him a shovel and instructed him where to dig and then drove the troopy straight out.

With Italian as their first language and not speaking too much English, I suggested more suitable tyre pressures for the roads that they were planning to drive on, which they seemed to understand. I am quite surprised that they made it this far from Perth without getting some tyre damage at these pressures. Britz should be far more responsible in educating the people who hire their vans about different tyre pressures for different situations.

No firewood around the camp so no fire tonight. We were going to have a roast, and thought of using some heat beads, but as they were wet and in small pieces from our first day out in the rain, we gave up on that idea.



The kids and I had pasta for dinner, Tracy had instant noodles. I did finally manage to call Curtin Springs over Radtel and leave a message for Dennis and Sue, letting them know that we were delayed by a day and would see them tomorrow afternoon. We also tried a bit later to get a call through to the kids, but were unable to find a suitable frequency.



Its actually quite warm tonight and having no wood we are just sitting around and updating our trip diaries. It will probably be another early night as we are both feeling pretty lousy with the flu. We will not bother to set an alarm tonight as tomorrow is a relatively easy day’s drive of about 300 kms. We are planning to stop at Yulara on the way through to raid the Chemist and pick up a few supermarket items, before heading up to Curtin Springs to meet up with Dennis and Sue.

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Cheers Richard VKS737 - Mobile 1912 Selcall 1912 Member: My Profile  My Blog  Send Message